Team Dragon Knights

Team Dragon Knights is a North American team. On May 8th, 2016, Riot Games issued a competitive ruling banning them from participating in any Riot-sponsored leagues.

Biography

2015 Preseason

Team Dragon Knights (TDK) formed in September 2014. They qualified for the Expansion Tournament via the Challenger ladder but did not participate in the tournament. However, after undergoing a number of roster changes they did qualify for the spring season of NACS, beating Team Frostbite and Storm in the qualifier.

2015 Season

TDK placed second in the season with a 7-3 record, behind Enemy eSports. In the playoffs, they beat Team Fusion 2-1 before losing to Enemy 1-3, sending them to the Summer Promotion Tournament. Despite the fact that they had placed higher than Fusion, Winterfox chose to play against them. TDK used substitute mid laner Alex Ich in their promotional matches and won 3-1, successfully qualifying for the NA LCS Summer Split. After the Promotion Tournament, TDK dropped LouisXGeeGee from their roster and acquired Emperor in his place and Ninja as their permanent mid laner, making the full roster include Seraph, Kez, Ninja, Emperor, and Smoothie.

Due to visa issues, Team Dragon Knights were unable to use their full roster for the first four weeks of the summer split, as Emperor and Ninja were unable to travel to the United States to play with the team. They instead substituted in LattmaN for Emperor and Bischu and mancloud for Ninja; Baby also substituted for Smoothie for their first three games. The substitute rosters went a combined 0-9, but when Emperor and Ninja finally joined the team for the second day of the fifth week, the team defeated first-place Team Dignitas. Despite that initial success, Team Dragon Knights were only able to secure two more victories over the next four weeks, and they finished in last place with a 3-15 record, one game behind Enemy. As a result, they were automatically relegated to the 2016 NA Challenger Series Spring Season.

2016 Preseason

In September 2015, Team Dragon Knights rebranded as Team Arena Online. However, in December, the team changed its name back to "Team Dragon Knights" because Riot Games wanted to see their new title sponsor deliver on promises to create a $1 million tournament circuit in the 2016 season before allowing a team to use their name in competition. The same day as their renaming, TDK received a competitive ruling: Co-owner Chris Shim was banned from serving any officially-recognized position on any team for the entire 2016 season, TDK itself was fined $10,000, and Ninja was suspended for two months after an attempted poaching of Samsung AD carry Fury.

2016 Season

Despite their roster limitations, TDK finished third in the NACS Regular Season, ahead of Team Liquid Academy and behind Ember. Prior to the playoffs, the team swapped several players with the LCS team Renegades: Alex Ich, RF Legendary, and Flaresz joined TDK while Seraph and Ninja left for Renegades. This roster change appeared to be in Renegades's favor; however, TDK still defeated Ember in the semifinals to advance to the promotion tournament. There they first faced and defeated Team Dignitas in an elimination match before losing to Renegades and then the first-place Challenger team Apex, falling just short of the LCS.

On May 8th, 2016, Riot released a competitive ruling stating that they had investigated the relationship between TDK and Renegades and found an inappropriate link between the two organizations, with the March roster trade and the sources of financial compensation to the players after the trade being one of the major problems. As a result of their findings, Riot ruled that TDK would be banned permanently from Riot-sponsored league play, and Chris Shim and Sean Shim would individually be indefinitely banned from serving in official capacity to an organization involved in official Riot league play. Despite a deadline of May 18th by which they were forced to sell their seed, it wasn't until May 23rd that the seed was announced as sold to Eanix.